The strangest expression flashed over her face—a wild ecstasy of joy that gave place, the next second, to anguish as wild. She put her hands over the tell-tale face, and bent her forehead upon her knees.
“Don’t! oh, don’t!” she moaned. “This is too hard! too cruel! If you could only know all, you would not urge me! I did not think you could be so unkind!”
“No! no!” moved to tears by the hurt tone, and hurrying over the words. “You could never be _that_ to anybody—much less—I cannot say what I would!”
March knelt down by her, and raised her head with tender authority she could not resist. He wiped the tears from her face with his own handkerchief; smiled down into the wet eyes. Loving intimacy with his mother and sister had taught him wondrously winsome ways.
“Listen to me, dear!” as he would address a grieving child. “Sometime, when you are quite willing to talk freely to me of this awful ‘all,’ I will prove to you how chimerical it is. Until then, nothing you can say or do can shake my purpose of making you my wife, in God’s own good time. We were _made_ for one another, Hetty! I have known that this great while. I am positive I could convince you of it, if you would give me a chance.”
She arose nervously, her hands chafing one another in an action that was like wringing them in impatience or anguish.
“I must go, Mr. Gilchrist! It is wrong to allow you to say all this. Then, too, Hester will be uneasy and need me.”
“Let me go with you and explain why you have outstayed your time,” March suggested, demurely. “We could not have a more sympathetic confidante than Hester. And I must tell somebody.”
“There is nothing to tell! There never can be. Cannot you see? haven’t I convinced you of this?”
“Not in the least. Until you can lay your hand upon your heart—the heart you and I know to be so true to itself and to others—and say, with the lips that cannot frame a lie—‘March Gilchrist, I can never love you in _any_ circumstances!’ I shall not see this other ‘never’ _you_ articulate so fiercely. If you want to get rid of me instantly, and for all time, look at me and say it now—_Hetty!_”
His lingering enunciation of the name she had never thought beautiful before, would of itself have deprived her of the power to obey. She stood dumb, with drooping head and cheeks burning red as the sunset, her figure half turned away, a lovely study of maiden confusion, had the spectator been cool enough to note artistic effects.